Wow, where did the time go? Seems like only a couple of days ago, we released Tongass Fjords. For the record, I’m not dead, just busy. Now that Tongass has been turned loose, I’ve been turning my attention to several other projects for FSX. Emma Field X is on my short list, as is Stark’s Twin Oaks Airpark (designed to work with the upcoming ORBX Pacific Northwest scenery). If you enjoyed Plum Island, have no fear — another 100 Dollar Burger airport is in the works as well…

Soon, you’ll be able to take off from 2B2 and turn north along the coast, heading into the wilds of Maine. The destination? Miller’s Field (ME74). Here are some shots of the real deal, some of which I took on my recent photo safari to New England, and some courtesy of John Miller, the field’s owner.

Yep, it’s finally time. After years of development and months of testing, a big patch of SE Alaska is finally available for you FSX bush pilots…

TONGASS FJORDS X RELEASED!

See screenshots courtesy of master screenshooter Nick Churchill

Holger posted a set of comparison pics showing how Tongass X simply shreds the default Alaska scenery, and makes the original FS9 version look a bit dated as well.

Ready to buy? Download from SimMarket for €33,26 (27,95 without VAT), or the Flight1 wrapper version for $38.95 US.

The Avsim forums are up and running again, and even seem to be largely intact from before. That’s an astounding effort from all involved. Good job, fellas.

Oh, and take THAT, whichever lowlife scuzzball thought it’d be fun to wipe them out. Now let’s show our team spirit and go make or comment on a forum posting today.

http://forums1.avsim.net/

I’ve been so wrapped up in finishing Tongass Fjords lately that I haven’t taken the time to post on Emma Field’s progress. Here’s a little taste of what’s going on… One of the interesting challenges of creating a fictional airfield is that there’s no one reference to draw from. When re-creating a real airport, I just document it as best I can photographically, then use those pics to translate the real thing into a simulated version. It’s not simple, but it is fairly straightforward. When creating a place entirely from scratch, I’ve got latitude to follow my imagination, adding whatever buildings and details I think should be there.

Rather than just haunting my local airfields and “stealing” key buildings for re-use in Emma, I’m taking a more organic approach. Like the other day—I was taking a morning walk through my local park, when I spotted a picnic shelter. The first thing that came to mind was “that thing is huge, I’ll bet you could actually fit a Cessna 172 easily inside it”. Bingo! My 3D modeler brain started racing, imagining ways I could string several of these together to form a long covered “hangar” that is rustic and gives that Pacific Northwest feel.

So don’t be surprised if you see screenshots of Emma soon with a long bay of covered GA parking just off the taxiway. This is the sort of look I’m going for with the new Emma; rough and rustic, a little “homemade”, without all those fancy pre-fab buildings that make modern airports look so dull.

Occasionally, our little hobby grabs the attention of the mainstream press—usually when things go astray. The BBC posted a news item this morning about the destruction of Avsim by hackers. I whole-heartedly agree with Derek Davis’s quote from the end of the article – Avsim will indeed rise from the ashes. The article also quotes me (albeit unattributed) from a post I made on SimFlight: there is a special place in hell for hackers who pull stunts like this.

It’s almost worth going to hell just to kick those *&^#% in the nuts when I get there.

By now you might have heard the news: some low-life numbnuts bottom-feeding scumbag (or group of scumbags) has decided it would be fun to hack into the Avsim servers and take down the world’s largest FS website and file library. Nice. Rather than me going on with choice expletives all morning, I’ll reprint the press release from Tom Allensworth, Avsim’s head honcho:

“We regret to inform the flight simulation community that on Tuesday, May 12, AVSIM was hacked and effectively destroyed. The method of the hack makes recovery difficult, if not impossible, to recover from. Both servers, that is the library / email and web site / forum servers were attacked. AVSIM is totally offline at this time and we expect to be so for some time to come. We are not able to predict when we will be back online, if we can come back at all. We will post more news as we are able to in the coming days and weeks.”

Needless to say, this is terrible news for the hobby. Let’s all put our collective heads together and think/pray/meditate for the speedy recovery of their data, with a side of prosecution for the mindless idiots who would do such a thing.

A temporary forum has been set up for Avsim users here. I encourage you to visit it for updates on the situation, and to express your support to the Avsim team. I imagine they’re in need of it right now.

I just visited Jarn’s eyeball-grabbing FS website after too long an absence. Embarrassing, actually, since he’s in my blogroll. If you’re not familiar with his work, drop everything and go there now. No kidding.

That stampede of thundering hoofbeats you hear is the crowd of armchair aviators rushing to Aerosoft to get their Catalina. Yep, hard as it may be to believe, they finally pushed the kitty out the door. From the looks of Nick Churchill’s gorgeous screenshots, it’s another masterpiece. Stefan Hoffmann, the talented gent who brought us the Hughes H1 racer, was the lead on this one. That’s all I need to say.

Just a heads-up: I recently added Twitter “tweets” to my FS repertoire. If you’d like to follow me, visit the Twitter site, log in, and follow “bwomack”. I’ll try to make it worth your while.

What’s that? You don’t have a Twitter account? I won’t tell anyone. Just visit the site and set up your account today. You can just lurk if you like and follow me and others, but I’ll bet that after a while you won’t be able to resist joining in. It’s that fun.

I should have known that those beautiful screenshots meant the RealAir Duke was poised to roll out of the hangar. Just announced: the Duke is ready for sale! Head on over to RealAir and get yours.